The designing/developing of a Web application uses established standard architecture such as the Web 3-tier model. The Web 3-tier model is sorted into a Web screen (interface) for receiving a request of the application, a module for processing the request of the application, and a database for reading/writing the result of the processing or the like. Designing methods using this sorting are used in common designing/developing of a Web application.
The use of an application program that operates in a distributed manner on unspecific machines is becoming commonplace in virtualized environments or cloud environments. Application programs specialized for use in such environments are also being designed/developed.
Cloud computing utilizes functions of application software, functions of middleware that executes an application, and functions of infrastructure components such as an operating system, a network, and storage to build an application that provides a given function to users.
The main elemental technology for implementing cloud computing is a technology of virtualizing a server, storage, and the like. The virtualizing technology distinguishes the category of physical hardware resources (physical machines) such as a CPU and a hard disk from the category of logical hardware functions (virtual machines) such as the count of virtually allocated CPU cores and the virtually allocated storage amount.
Today's Web application design/development treats the physical and logical hardware categories described above as one category. In the developing of an application for use in a cloud environment or a similar environment, on the other hand, each distinguished part is cut out as a design interface for creating an application configuration. Consequently, the number of design interfaces tends to be significantly larger in application development that takes the virtualizing technology into account than in the designing of a Web application that does not distinguish different aspects of hardware.